Pentagon Trying to Avoid Across-the-Board Cuts
By: Nathan Hodge
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704681904576317633639372842.html?KEYWORDS=NATHAN+HODGE
The Pentagon is offering new clues on how it plans to meet a White House goal of trimming the military budget by $400 billion over the next decade as it winds down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking at an investment conference Wednesday in New York, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said the department would avoid “across the board cuts” to military spending, and had launched a process that would identify “where the nation is willing to accept risk” when it comes to investing in new weaponry.
The goal of that process, Mr. Lynn said in prepared remarks, was “to manage the slowdown in defense spending without disrupting the capabilities of the world’s most effective military force.”
In April, President Barack Obama proposed cutting $400 billion in projected security spending by 2023, part of a larger effort to rein in federal deficits. The move, which caught retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates off guard, may pave the way for a broader re-evaluation of military strategy. The Pentagon recently launched a comprehensive review of the U.S. roles and missions around the globe.
Already, Pentagon leaders have identified areas where they want to preserve investment. Mr. Lynn said the Defense Department needed to “continue incubating” technology for stealthy, long-range bombers, pilotless aircraft and cyber warfare.
Mr. Lynn’s remarks also seem aimed at reassuring a defense industry that is anxious whether the recent killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan—and the expected exit of Mr. Gates at the end of June—might accelerate defense cuts. He said there would be “no second last supper,” an allusion to a famous dinner meeting at the Pentagon in 1993, when the department’s senior leadership told defense companies they would have to consolidate to survive the post-Cold War downturn in defense spending.
But, Mr. Lynn added, the department is taking on a “sector-by-sector and tier-by-tier review of the defense industrial base,” with the aim of encouraging long-term investors. “Think Warren Buffett, not Gordon Gekko,” he said.
The speech comes as the defense budget faces growing pressure from several quarters, including Republicans who are traditionally hawkish on military spending.
Michael Herson, president of American Defense International, a defense-industry lobbying firm, said earlier in the day that the killing of the al Qaeda founder was “definitely going to have an impact on the debate” in Washington over military spending and the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. “The problem with the situation in Afghanistan is we don’t have a way to define success,” he said. “In order for the administration to counter that, they have to make it clear what the mission is.”
The House Armed Services Committee this week is marking up the president’s $671 billion defense spending request for fiscal 2012. In a statement ahead of the full committee markup, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.), the chairman of the committee and a defender of robust defense budgets, said the committee would “scrutinize the Defense Department’s budget and identify inefficiencies to invest those savings into higher national security priorities.”
The Defense Department’s recommendations for trimming costs are likely to be incorporated in the fiscal 2013 budget request, which will be revealed early next year.
